We’ve all heard stories about home owners who refuse to sell when big commercial projects are planned to be built around their property … well 86 year old Edith Macefield is another property owner who refused to move from her home when developers from Seattle decided to build a commercial property in her neighborhood.
Macefield refused an offer of 1 million dollars to move.
They’ve decided to go ahead with their project and her home will have a five story construction project around and beside her home.
“I don’t want to move. I don’t need the money. Money doesn’t mean anything,” she said.
There’s one house downtown here in Toronto that looks so tiny with a huge 20 story building almost on top of it. I imagine that Mrs. Macefield’s home will look like that too!
Objects made of metal are being stolen by people looking to cash in on the increase in raw metal prices. Church roofs, statues, drain covers and even tweezers have been stolen in the city of Paris.
Thefts of copper, aluminum, zinc and nickel were up 144 percent in France last year.
“We are witnessing a real pillage of companies’ assets,” Colonel Philippe Schneider, who heads a police division that specializes in countering such crime, told reporters.
“Everything can be stolen, everything can be sold — cables, drain covers, sculptures,” Schneider said. “We even had 300 kilograms of tweezers stolen.”
Other targets included plane doors, phone booth floors, car wheel rims, cemetery gates and a church roof made of zinc.
Copper, widely used in construction and industry, became a big target for thieves last year as prices of the metal doubled to $8,800 a tonne at one point due to booming Asia demand.
Schneider said stealing cable from a building site or hijacking trucks loaded with scrap metal could pay more than robbing a cash machine or a bank and was far less risky.
“Stealing 10 tonnes of copper is simple,” he said.
“Alongside the traditional petty thefts are methods typical of organized crime, such as … armed robberies, often by international networks.”
However, the number of incidents reported had dropped around 40 percent since October, partly due to a fall in prices and partly because of police efforts to break up organized gangs, he said.
World copper prices have tumbled over the past few months but remain around 20 percent higher than at the same time last year.
Schneider said thieves often sold metal to recycling companies. However, of the 2,500 to 3,000 recycling firms in France, a maximum of 100 were involved in metals trafficking.
Wouldn’t it have been nice to have gotten in on the New York City Housing program back in the 70′s?
The program was started to encourage new construction and it has enabled huge reductions in property taxes on certain buildings in Manhattan.
The savings continue and will likely continue into next year.
Several people have benefited from these tax reductions including designer Calvin Klein who saved 134,000 on his penthouse; Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter who saves 130,000 per year on his $4 million Trump World Tower Apartment; and finally actress natalie Portman who has saved 26,300 each year on her 5.8 million condo.
